It was a truism that all civilizations were basically neurotic until they made contact with everybody else and found their place within the ever-changing meta-civilisation of other beings, because, until then, during the stage when they honestly believed they might be entirely alone in existence, all solo societies were possessed of both an inflated sense of their own importance and a kind of existential terror at the sheer scale and apparent emptiness of the universe.

Custom Search

Friday, July 30, 2010

Aerobic isometrics have been around for a while, but were little known to the public until Ironmind published Steve Justa's excellent book Rock, Iron, Steel. In a twist of the classic functional isometric contraction theory, where one exerts a brief 100% effort against an immovable object for 6-7 seconds, the contraction is longer but at a suitably lower intensity (30-40% is suggested).

I decided to use my long TNT cables for this. It is pretty much impossible to gauge the intensity of the contraction over such a long period of time, so the cables keep me honest - I stretch them to the desired position and hold them there for as long as possible. This is important: after 20-25 seconds the effort seems closer to 60%, and toward the end of the set my muscles are shaking badly and the handles are almost impossible to hold in position.

Some exercises were tough to set up with cables, so I reverted to the Universal Strength Apparatus sold by bodyweightculture.com - the best suspension device on the market, also doubles handily as a portable isometric power rack.

I used light cable resistance and aimed for one minute - long contractions. Made it on most sets, had to cut it short on a few of them. Some exercises I used were: